Warren Hall, the former signature building of the Hayward Campus of California State University, East Bay that housed administration offices and classrooms for some 40 years, will be demolished by implosion on Saturday, Aug. 17, at approximately 9 a.m., as weather and safety permit.

Due to safety considerations, the campus will close to the public as of 8:30 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 16, reopening at 6 a.m. Monday, Aug. 19. The 13-story Warren Hall, which opened in 1971, was determined by the California State University Seismic Review Board to be the most seismically vulnerable building in the CSU system. It has been empty for about two years, as most of the offices that once occupied Warren Hall were moved to a new structure, the Student Services Administration (SA) building on the east side of the campus.

The demolition process will isolate and then implode the key structural supporting elements of the building. The 195-foot structure will lean and then fall in a predetermined area away from nearby campus buildings.

With Warren Hall sitting little more than a mile from the Hayward Fault, the U.S. Geological Survey - in cooperation with the university - will observe and record the implosion on hundreds of seismographs temporarily set up within a one-mile radius of the demolition. The data gathered will help characterize the underground geology around the fault in three dimensions.

More information about the USGS-CSUEB research, called the East Bay Seismic Experiment, is available at http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=3623.